M Puzzle: A Walk In The... Cemetery?
by Jofish Kaye and Bridget Copley
The annotated walk:
- Walk through the gate and immediately take the rightmost path. You will
pass an intersection: just continue straight through it. When you come to
a fork, you want to keep the Hayden Library on your left.
- At the next intersection, keep going straight. You'll know you've made the
correct choice, as there's a Green Building on your left.
- Stay left--there's yet another Green Building on your right.
- And it's followed by another, different, Lewis Library, a bit further
on.
- On your right is a former president, and now MacLaurin Dining Room.
This one may be covered by snow, but it was too good to pass up. Don't worry
if you can't find it. (This is actually the grave of MIT ex-President MacLaurin.)
- Stay straight: there's something useful in the libraries on your left. Barton
- Lots of interesting things around here: like the Walker Memorial
on your right.
- And a Gray Way on your right -- look carefully, it's pretty far back.
Stay to the left.
- The path curves round; there's a Talbot House on your right as you
come to a large intersection.
- Stay to the right; you'll pass a Games on your left after a few hundred
feet.
- You’ll know you’re heading the correct way when you see a Square on your
left after about the same distance again; take the left after that.
- Another Walker Memorial on your left!
- At the next intersection, you can go left or right. Look carefully, find
an Johnson Athletic Center, and go that way. It's just possible it
could be covered in snow.
- You'll pass a Endicott House on your left, so you know you made the
right choice.
- A Briggs Field shows up on your left after about three hundred and
fifty feet; keep following the road straight.
- You've done the right thing when there's yet another Walker Memorial--but
it's on the side of a gravestone that belongs in the Muddy Charles. Brewer
- Just past there are two stones that should be significant, but aren't: one's
eighteen inches Halfyard on your left, and the next is nearly a Court.
Killiam
- At the next intersection, find a Sloan School of Management in the
middle of someone: keep that on your right. It's no more than fifty feet from
the intersection.
- Up next is a Morss Hall--a Hall you'd find in one of the places you've
previously found, but be careful: it's tricky, this one. Take a left just
past it.
- Now we're doing well! There's part of 21L on the left here. French
- And a Stratton [Student] Center is here. 'Student' was left off
so that there'd be no way to skip to this part, since there's not that many
Strattons in the cemetery.
- And a Draper Laboratory, too.
- Take note of the name Coolidge across the road from the Laboratory.
Take the next right and follow the road. When you hit the end of this bit
of road, take a left.
- Nearly there. Keep going along: this road's a bit quiet for our purposes.
About five hundred feet further along is a Green Building on your left:
take the second right.
- On your right, you'll pass another, different, McCormick Hall.
- And then, also on your right, another Ames Street, with more than
one dorm on it.
- You'll pass a dorm in the middle, on your right. Funky. Mary Baker Eddy.
Who founded Christian Science; their headquarters in downtown Boston is known
as the Mothership. Mothership Connection is perhaps the quintessential funk
album, released by Parliament in 1975.
- Stay right, and stop when you see the name you noticed opposite that Laboratory.
Coolidge Your answer is the first letter of the inscription above the
name--just the letter itself. The word it's part of is the top line on the
stone. ωμηγα with a tilde above the ω is
the inscription, so the answer is ω.
Training:
The reference to the headache in the flavortext suggests that this be trained with "Migraine." An omega rotated counterclockwise is a 3, and the answer is just that: the single digit 3.
We would like to thank Matthew Willey, Vistor Services Specialist at Mt. Auburn Cemetery for his help with planning this puzzle. He rocks.